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PRECIOUS DOSE: The Pfizer vaccine will be the first to reach Europe and Norway. Photo: Ted S. Warren / AP
When the Pfizer vaccine arrives in Norway, it will be shipped to cold rooms across the country. Where are the warehouses, few ever know.
– It is clear that this could potentially be exposed to some form of security threat. We are in dialogue with all the security authorities in this regard, so they carry out their evaluations on an ongoing basis, says Chief Medical Officer Are Stuwitz Berg at NIPH.
The Pfizer vaccine has been approved and will arrive in Norway at the end of December. So it can’t be shipped directly to municipalities – it has to be stored at minus 70 degrees in freezers, and this can’t be done everywhere.
– There are many considerations to take into account. Not all locations can have ULT freezers, so they need to be shipped to a number of storage locations that have the capacity and competence to store frozen product and ensure safety, Berg explains.
– The second consideration is that the stocks should be relatively close to where the vaccine is to be distributed. When the vaccine first goes out to the municipalities, they only have five days to keep it from the moment it is taken out of the freezers.
Read all about vaccines in the VG Vaccine Special.
Counterfeiting and theft
– We are taking many steps now to reduce the risk of counterfeiting and theft of vaccines, and one of these steps is to identify and reduce potential threats to the supply chain, says Medical Director Erik Hjelvin of Pfizer in Norway.
He notes that safety is also about taking good care of vaccines during transport.
– Our vaccines must be stored at very cold temperatures, and we use a combination of GPS transmitter and thermometers to be able to continuously monitor both where the transport is and that the temperature is correct.
The boxes with which the Pfizer vaccine is transported to the country are equipped with a GPS and a temperature gauge. They send signals to a control center, so you know when they open. Read more about it here.
COLD BOX: The image to the right shows a specially designed shipping box for Pfizer vaccine, which should be stored at minus 70 degrees. Photo: Pfizer / AP
Various secret warehouses
The process is less complicated when it comes to the other vaccines Norway can access. None of them require equally cold storage.
– Then the normal route of vaccine distribution will be used. They are then stored in our central warehouse, which we also talk about as little as possible about where, says Berg at FHI.
For security reasons they are exactly the same:
– All this is to minimize the danger that someone with bad intentions will put sticks in the wheels for the important vaccination of the elderly and residents of nursing homes.
The vaccination team that the Norwegian Health Directorate sends to municipalities is also not publicly discussed for security reasons. This is everything from cotton swabs to needles.
The Norwegian Health Directorate has sent letters to county governors asking them to be careful about the type of information they give the media about acid. Fear is both robbery and sabotage. Read more about it here.
They make sure against this
A security threat can be anything from someone who wants to screw up the vaccine to someone who wants to steal for a profit, Berg explains.
– The Pfizer vaccine is probably not very easily marketable. But it is part of thinking about the security around such a valuable product that many are waiting for.
General Secretary Jürgen Stock of Interpol for International Police Cooperation has told the German newspaper WirtschaftsWoche that criminal organizations are ready. He says that one can experience robberies and robberies at vaccine warehouses and attacks on shipments.
But in Norway, Kripos currently has no information indicating a possible crime against vaccine supply chains or storage, writes Kjell Eirik Mortensen, head of the Intelligence Section at Kripos, in an email to VG.
– However, this does not mean that vaccine stocks or distribution cannot be targeted by criminal acts. We have the impression that the relevant authorities and companies are aware of the security aspect around this and implement the necessary measures.
Think the vaccine protects against a new variant of the virus
Espen Rostrup Nakstad, deputy director of the Norwegian Health Directorate, explains to VG that the first vaccination is scheduled to take place in the period from December 27 to 29. It is mainly Oslo and the surrounding regions that have priority for the first vaccines.
– Exactly when the vaccines will arrive, we don’t know. Starting in early January, we will receive more doses and then they will be sent to more municipalities, he says.
Nakstad also says that there is currently no reason to believe that the vaccine will not work on the new mutation of the virus that has been discovered in the UK.
– The manufacturer says that they are pretty sure the vaccine will work normally in relation to this variant. When it comes to antibodies, if they manage to adhere to these virus labels that have now been slightly changed, that is also believed, but in the future we will test and see if the effect is that good, he says.
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Read more about the six vaccine candidates that are relevant to Norway by clicking on them below:
